


Up North

by effing_gravity (Malteaser)



Series: Principality of Gays [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Is Trying (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale is Not Innocent (Good Omens), Canon - Good Omens (Book & TV Combination), Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), HIV/AIDS Crisis, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Manchester City, Mutual Pining, Other, Period Typical Bigotry, Pole Dancing, Pre-Relationship, Queer Guardian Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23959015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malteaser/pseuds/effing_gravity
Summary: The year is 1995. The Principality Aziraphale has been given a task: infiltrate enemy territory (Manchester), avoid the Adversary's wiles (Crowley with full sleeve tattoos and very little else), and discover why one young woman is not heeding the call of Lord (she's very busy).It goes about as well as you might expect.On hiatus until sometime December, or so goes the hope.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Principality of Gays [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663042
Comments: 42
Kudos: 99





	1. Lake Bluff

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I've been writing on my meal break to keep my sanity while working crisis overtime. It probably says something about me that this is the sort of thing I write to distract myself from a pandemic. 
> 
> It's listed as part of the "Principality of Gays" series: while it shares some characters with and explores something that "If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out." touched upon- namely, that Aziraphale was placed on probation for some years during the height of the AIDS crisis- it's not necessarily in the same universe.

Aziraphale sat in the corner booth of the charming little restaurant he’d noticed not far from his hotel and let out a contented sigh. He’d been a little put off by the name- Full Moon Family Restaurant did rather conjure to mind lots of frazzled parents with children running around underfoot- but dinning options had been limited so late at night, and he’d judged that the risk of screaming children so close to midnight was probably negligible, when compared to the rewards of an all-day breakfast menu. 

It had paid off beautifully: Americans really did do quite wonderful things with omelets. He took another bite and sighed, letting his eyes flutter closed as the creamy Monterey jack cheese coated his tongue. 

When he opened his eyes, the Archangel Gabriel was seated across from him. 

_Oh, I do wish he would stop doing that,_ Aziraphale thought, nearly dropping his fork. He placed it nicely on his plate and plastered on a smile instead. “Gabriel! What brings you here?”

“I’m here to tell you to get back to England,” Gabriel said. “I know you’ve been all excited about this project to...” He trailed off, clearly waiting for Aziraphale to fill in the blank. 

“Spread blessings of fortitude and grace to those involved in, er, doing good works,” Aziraphale supplied. It was the truth, and it was what he’d put down on the paperwork when he’d filed his travel plans, and if Gabriel had looked any closer at what those good works were he might be in very big trouble. 

“Yes, that’s the thing,” Gabriel said, clearly disinterested, and Aziraphale mentally breathed a sigh of relief. It had been almost precisely a decade ago that he’d been placed on probation for trying to hurry along this sort of thing. While the last of the increased surveillance and rationing of his miracles had been lifted when he’d passed his quarterly review last year, and he was being decidedly more subtle about his approach now, he still was quite certain that he should never use phrases like “protease inhibitor” and “antiretroviral treatment” in the Archangel’s presence ever again. “You’re going to have to cut that short. Your adversary is causing trouble.”

“The demon Crowley?” Aziraphale asked. “Goodness, what have they done?”

“They’re preventing a potential minister from hearing the call of the Lord,” Gabriel said. 

“That’s… new,” Aziraphale said, not quite able to keep the skepticism out of his voice. “Normally they focus less on individuals and more on big events.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s got us concerned,” Gabriel said. “If they’re focused on this one human, then Hell’s got to have big plans for them.”

Aziraphale frowned. This really did not sound like Crowley at all- but if Hell was directly involved, he knew that the demon would have little recourse but to obey. “Who is conveying the call, if I might ask?”

“The Virtue Phounebiel,” Gabriel replied.

Aziraphale sat up a little straighter. Phounebiel had been a member of his probationary committee, and she’d always rated him favorably. He’d rather gotten the impression that she might even agree with him a little bit, though of course one didn’t simply speak of such things once judgement had been passed. 

“She’s convinced that this human is someone who could do a lot of good, and when they didn’t heed the call she went to check. The demon’s energy is all over the area, apparently,” Gabriel reached into his jacket and materialized a folder. “All the details are in here.”

Aziraphale took the folder, but didn’t open it. The waitress who had recommended the Denver omelet to him was approaching and while Upstairs had gotten better at not casually handing out things which would inspire divine ecstasy in any human who viewed it, he was of the opinion that it was still better safe than sorry. 

“Will your friend be needing a menu?” she asked.

“No,” Gabriel said, nose wrinkling with disgust as he stood. “I’m leaving, and so is he.”

“I will have to settle the bill,” Aziraphale said, pointedly not contradicting him even as he pointedly remained seated. 

“You do that,” Gabriel said with a dismissive wave. “And Aziraphale? Make sure we don’t lose this one. Make sure they see the light.”

With that he left the restaurant. Aziraphale waited until the door had closed behind him before turning back to the waitress. _Darlene_ , her heart-shaped name tag proclaimed her. Aziraphale supposed he should make an effort to remember it. 

“I really do wish he would stop doing that,” Aziraphale told her. “We work for Welfare, for pity’s sake. The dramatics are quite counterproductive.”

She laughed, relieved. “Would you like me to box that up?”

Aziraphale hesitated, and then picked his fork back up. “No, but I will take a cup of tea, if you have it.”

After Darlene had gone, come back with a small array of tea bags (a small sachet of high quality English Breakfast Tea having miraculously appeared in the spread just as he reached for it) and left again, Aziraphale opened up the folder. It was, thankfully, a very human looking dossier, written in English with black ink and everything. There was a picture, a full name, an address…

 _Ah,_ Aziraphale thought, looking down at the address. _That explains why they think Crowley is involved._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lake Bluff is the headquarters of AbbVie Inc, formerly a part of Abbott Laboratories, which holds the patent for Ritanavir, one of the first protease inhibitors and a critical component of the HAART regimen that makes HIV a survivable condition.


	2. O’Hare to Heathrow

Back in the earlier days of the Arrangement- long after it had been established, but not terribly long after Aziraphale had begun to think of England as his home (his second home, after Heaven, of course)- he and Crowley had sat down and discussed the question of territoriality.

Well. He said ‘sat down’, but in truth it had seemed too risky to sit down together so soon after Crowley had nearly walked into a bookshop full of Archangels, flowers and chocolates in hand, so they’d met at a ball and, seeing as neither of them were particularly adroit at dancing, they’d been left to be one another’s dance partners without having to expend any energy to make it so. Being surrounded by humans made the whole thing seem safer, somehow, and they each intended to write to their Home Offices and report that they’d spent the evening tailing their adversary to no avail, so they had a perfectly good excuse to be in the same place at the same time.

It seemed reasonable, given the demands of their respective Home Offices and their own desires to remain in proximity to one another, that they each lay claim, so to speak, over some portion of the country, so they would have something they could reliably point to as being done as a result of their influences. Crowley was in agreement, and so a handful of cotillions later they’d hammered out the specifics: Aziraphale was to have free range over Shrewsbury and, by extension, all of Shropshire, and in return he would leave Lancashire- and more specifically Manchester- to Crowley’s wiles. 

“Why Manchester?” he’d asked. 

“Oh, it’s very up and coming,” she’d replied. “And I have such _plans_ for the place.” 

Aziraphale could only presume, from the course of events thereafter (Madchester was one word for it; Gunchester was another), that Crowley had been able to see many of those plans through.

He hadn’t really had any corresponding plans for Shrewsbury, and aside from spending the better part of a decade there after the First World War in recuperation didn’t really exert a lot of his attention there. He only did what was necessary to keep the place green and pastoral, to provide a ready contrast to Crowley’s portion of the country. It wouldn’t feel like him there, not the way Manchester just exuded Crowley. 

“Hello, it’s me, I’m calling again,” Aziraphale said, having placed an international call to Crowley’s number five times in as many hours. “I would appreciate it if you were to meet me at our usual spot, or barring that, leave me a message. I should be home some time in the next, oh, ten hours or so.”

He waited. When Crowley once more failed to pick up, he sighed. “Mind how you go,” he said, and hung up.

It wasn’t as though they weren’t allowed into one another’s territories under the terms of the Arrangement, but they did generally _try_ to extend to one another the courtesy of letting the other know when they were going to infringe. They’d even, in recent decades, taken to taking care of each other’s business when it cropped up in their territory without the tit-for-tat they were normally so careful to employ. Consequently, he hadn’t been up that way for more than a train transfer since 1954, and that had been a special circumstance and at Crowley’s invitation besides. 

Perhaps Crowley was merely asleep? Aziraphale checked his watch, which he kept running on London time- it was just past nine in the morning, over there. A reasonable hour for a reasonable person to be awake, but no one could ever claim Crowley as a reasonable person. It was entirely possible that they’d slept straight through the entire time Aziraphale had been abroad. 

He _hoped_ Crowley was asleep. He hoped they were asleep and dreaming of beautifully off-schedule bus lines, and not anywhere near Manchester. He hoped Crowley didn’t have anything to do with this minister who was refusing to be a minister. It really wasn’t their style, which meant that Hell really must be leaning on them for this, and not only was the involvement of Hell a generally agreed-upon Bad Thing but it tended to weigh even more heavily on Crowley than when they were getting commendations for things the humans had thought of themselves. 

He hoped, all the way through his flight back to London, where he returned home to an empty bookshop, no messages on his ansaphone, and no demon waiting for him at their usual bench in St. James park, no matter that he’d sat there until the park closed. 

Sighing to himself he dialed Crowley’s number once more. 

“Where are you, you fiend?” he cried, before Crowley’s ansaphone message had a chance to play. Probably for the best. That was an unspeakably rude way to begin a conversation. 

“Crowley, it’s me,” Aziraphale said more calmly, once the infernal thing had beeped. “I’m afraid that this business up north is rather pressing, so if you don’t contact me before about seven in the morning, I’m just going to have, well, go up there and handle it myself.” He waited. Crowley still didn’t pick up. “Right. Well. That’s that, then. Toodle-loo, er, off I pop, I suppose.” He made to hang up the receiver. “Please be well,” he blurted out, before he’d quite managed it. He winced as he gently placed the receiver back in its cradle. 

Well, that had been mortifying. Hopefully that last bit hadn’t gone through. 

He _did_ hope Crowley was well, though. He was probably just going to have to keep hoping, however. If Crowley would neither answer his calls nor contact him, then he wasn’t going to have to have any way of knowing for sure. 

He fixed himself a cup of tea, and then he read through the file again. The would-be holy woman’s name was Alexandrina Nembhard. She was rather on the younger side of things, in her mid twenties. She was from Manchester, the youngest child of five, both parents still living. She was a student at the University of Salford, worked nights at some establishment called The Working Spanner, and lived in a flat in Hulme with some number of other students. 

The reports of what she did, precisely, were patchy- too much demonic interference for the Observation Center to get a clear picture, and Heaven hadn’t wanted to risk sending inexperienced agents into Manchester for long periods of time. There was nothing in the file to indicate why Phounebiel felt so strongly about calling her to minister- presuming ministry was the end goal here- much less why she wasn’t answering. Consequently, it was a very short read. 

He sat in his armchair, and lamented that he hadn’t been able to shop around for books the way he’d planned. It would have cut down on his choices considerably, if he’d had new books to jump to the head of the queue. 

In the end, he opened up his old, reliable copy of _A Thief in the Night_ and settled in. Short stories seemed as good a way as any to pass the time. He sat and read until the clock struck seven, and then he stood. Reshelved his book. Gently cleaned his cup, saucer, and teapot. Changed his clothes. 

It was half past when he’d finally conceded to the fact that he was dragging his feet, and the phone had still not rung. 

Well. Fine, then. He really would just have to do this himself, if Crowley wasn’t going to step in.

Oh, but he did hope they were all right. 

He put the file into his briefcase, which still held a notebook, pen, and reading material from his trip to the United States, and pulled out the timetables for London Euston. There was a direct train to Manchester Piccadilly leaving in just over half an hour. He stepped out, hailed a miraculously passing taxi, and went on his way.


	3. London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly

The ride up to Manchester was about as uneventful as any two and a half hour train ride could be. It wasn’t terribly crowded, there weren’t any dramatic break ups, and no one tried to start a conversation with him. 

Well. He _did_ speak to a young teaching student, who was headed home to visit his ailing father after a period of estrangement. Aziraphale helped him to wrangle his luggage into the overhead compartment, they did share a bit of gallows humor about the difficulty in recommending books to adolescents due to Section 28 (“I thought they wanted us to _not_ die of ignorance,” the student had joked, and even though Aziraphale had both heard and told that joke many times before he still laughed) and that _did_ attract the attention of an older woman who did proceed to watch him very closely indeed. Pulling out his copy of _Maurice_ had definitely not helped to deflect her interest, and her interest had definitely not been positive. 

It was nothing Aziraphale had not dealt with many, many times before. He’s not sure that there had ever a time when anyone looked at him and thought _Ah, yes, there is a man with a heterosexual disposition_ , even during those days when the concept of differing sexualities was beyond taboo and downright unthinkable. He preferred being male, and had for some millennia now- but he’d always preferred to be just a little off from whatever was the standard of masculinity at the time. When coupled with his appreciation for people who presented in a similar fashion… well. Gay was the word for it right now, and it wasn’t the wrong one.

Some periods in history were trickier than others. Right now, it was trickier than he would have hoped it would be, twenty years ago, but significantly less tricky than he’d feared it would be ten years ago. Objectively, from a broad historical view, it was _much_ less tricky than it used to be, in this part of the world at least: people were still being arrested, of course but much of the time they weren’t charged with anything, and even when they were, they weren’t being sentenced to hard labor, being pilloried, or the noose. 

It _felt_ trickier though. Before, when homosexuality had been an offense in and of itself in England, he had always had all the powers of a Principality at his disposal, even if he’d had to be circumspect with them. They’d been there, if he needed to get out of a sticky situation, even if he was reluctant to use them while on notice for frivolous miracle use. And then, for a good three year period from 1985 to 1988 he couldn’t perform the simplest miracle without prior authorization, and in that time he’d been arrested (and then released without charges) four times, jumped and beaten twice, watched a dear friend get stabbed in the kidneys once, filed numerous incident reports with the Police Complaints Authority and watched fifty-eight people who considered him to be their Auntie Ezra die. 

It had all been very tricky to navigate, when he’d been more or less human. He’d come out of the experience with a newfound appreciation for all the actual humans who managed to bear up under such pressure. 

He’d learned caution from the experience too- learned to manage this without the use of miracles. He rather imagined that had been part of the point Gabriel had been trying to make, when he’d bound his powers for the duration of his probationary period. There was definitely a lot of going on about not using his powers for his own personal benefit, and preventing such things from escalating to the point of physical violence very much was to his personal benefit.

This was England, in broad daylight and on public transportation no less, so there was no messy confrontation as there might have been in the United States, or even in less visible circumstances. Once the student had disembarked at Wilmslow, Aziraphale had caught her eyes and, just for a moment, let the weight of his six thousand years on the Earth shine through. Then he’d smiled with the experience of someone who had been doing demonic deeds for centuries, and continued to do so long after she’d dropped her gaze.

Eventually, she grew uncomfortable and changed seats. Aziraphale had returned to his book until it was time to disembark. It was a good book, _Maurice_ , and as he’d known both the author and the men he’d based the main characters on personally reading it always gave him such a thrill of nostalgia. 

He took a good look at the whole of the train station as he left. It had Crowley’s fingerprints all over it. He winced and braced himself before stepping outside. 

Manchester had changed a lot. No more trams- but no, those had been gone when last he was up this way, though it had been a much more recent development then. There were buses, but given Crowley’s antagonistic relationship with public transportation he figured he was probably better off walking. 

The University of Salford was his first stop. According to the paltry schedule provided by the dossier, Miss Nembhard has a class that would let out at half past noon, and he would like a chance to observe her before he approached. If he had his bearings correctly, then he could just about make the walk on his own without any kind of miraculous intervention. 

He took a deep breath- oh good, the pollution seemed to have lessened since last he was here- and started off. West, he thought. He definitely needed to be headed west.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Section 28](https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/cacc0b40-c3a4-473b-86cc-11863c0b3f30) was a law passed to stop "the promotion of homosexuality as a pretend family unit". It mostly just stopped school/councils from helping gay teenagers, who strangely enough continued to exist throughout the 80s and 90s. 
> 
> [Don't Die of Ignorance](https://placingthepublic.lshtm.ac.uk/2018/05/20/remembering-the-dont-die-of-ignorance-campaign/) was the slogan of an ad campaign that ran in Britain circa 1986, advocating that people educate themselves about AIDS and take steps (such as condoms and not sharing needles) to protect themselves from it.


	4. Canal Street

Manchester really had changed quite a bit, but he felt much more confident in his ability to navigate its streets when he found Sackville Street more or less where he remembered it being. Though, of course, that might have something to do with the proximity to Canal Street. 

There was something about these communities- the gay villages- that made Aziraphale feel at ease in ways he couldn’t be anywhere else. Part of it was, undoubtedly, that he’d been given guardianship over the whole queer community over a century ago, but in truth he’d begun to feel comfortable in such spaces well before that. It was why he’d lobbied so hard for the position, which hadn’t even existed at the time: first sending his proposal up to Heaven after Mother Clap’s was raided, petitioning in person after that nasty business with the Vere Street Coterie, and simply continuing to do so until Sandalphon of all Archangels managed to give him a broadly worded enough _no_ that he could feasibly interpret it as a _yes_. He’d filled out all the requisite paperwork, gotten a harried looking Michael to sign off on it without really reading it, and then proceeded as he’d saw fit. It had taken a couple of decades for anyone to notice, and they’d only noticed because he’d attracted attention to himself by hanging the jury at Oscar’s first trial, which was, admittedly, not the most angelic of acts. 

There had been a great deal of unpleasantness- shouting and accusations of insubordination and threats of Falling, but in the end no one could really think of a good reason why he should do less work when he had proven more or less capable of his self-appointed workload and had filed out all the proper forms besides. The matter of Oscar’s trial had been separated from the matter of his duties, and once all the requisite disciplinary unpleasantness had been dispensed with he’d been allowed to continue- albeit with a great deal more paperwork and audits and random bouts of scrutiny whenever Gabriel was in the mood for it.

So, this was him now. People looked at him and saw someone who was gay with roughly the same intensity they saw someone who was English, and that now had something like Heaven’s stamp of approval on it. This was who he was comfortable being, even when it was, objectively speaking, not the most comfortable thing to be.

And this was the sort of place he felt he belonged. 

There were a lot of reasons as to why that was, aside from the matter of being gay himself. There was a vibrancy he enjoyed in many such places: artistry and musicality and sheer playfulness that had to be toned down elsewhere. That was a fairly major factor. If he thought too hard about it, however- and he’d had unfortunately many opportunities to think very hard about it over the last decade- he would be forced to conclude that he liked it so much because it reminded him very strongly of how Heaven had felt, before the Fall. 

There was the community itself, of course, the families stitched together out of individuals who hadn’t even met a year ago, the belonging where there once was none, everyone in one another’s business and ingrained into each other’s lives. More than that, there was his place in it: he was a fixture in a volatile system, reliable and respectable.

He hasn’t been so well-regarded in Heaven since… well, probably not the War, he’d acquitted himself well there, by Heaven’s standards. But since being reassigned from Eden, certainly, there had been quite a lot of chilling in how the other angels dealt with him, and it wasn’t long before that just became the way things were, for Aziraphale.

Ezra Fell experienced no such thing, not from his own people, at least. Part of that was, undoubtedly, that the humans didn’t know enough about his abilities to expect better of him, and they didn’t live long enough to be disappointed by him, but…

But that was all very much besides the point. The point was, Canal Street was not home in the same way Soho was, but it gave him a similar feeling. Quite an achievement for a city which had been under demonic influences for nearly two hundred years, though of course Crowley had never liked to pick upon the vulnerable. They were more of a lords and robber barons kind of demon, though they always claimed that it wasn’t out of a sense of fair play but rather the fact that people who were already miserable and hurting could simply be written off as a job well done with Crowley having to actually do anything.

Aziraphale found himself slowing down to a leisurely stroll as he took in the neighborhood. It had changed a great deal, since the 1950s. He’d have been disappointed if it hadn’t- they were no longer illegal, for the most part. And, well, Soho wasn’t quite far enough away from Manchester for him not to have heard of the _parties_ , though why they picked Wednesday nights of all nights for such revelry was beyond him.

Most of Canal Street seemed set up for such things, dancing, drugs, and discos- no, wait. They weren’t discos anymore, they were raves. At any rate, most of the buildings seemed taken up by venues for partying, and there were even a surprising number of hungover partiers still stumbling out of various buildings from the night before. 

Though, perhaps it wasn't too surprising, as it was Thursday morning.

Still, there was something else that was different, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on…

“First time back in a while?” asked a woman as she offered him a leaflet. 

“Yes, yes it is,” Aziraphale said, taking the leaflet from her without looking at it. “It’s been a couple of decades, as a matter of fact.”

“The windows are wild, right?”

“The-” It suddenly clicked for Aziraphale. “Yes! Yes, that’s it exactly. Goodness, I was driving myself mad trying to figure out what was so different.”

Many of the windows were large and consisted of clear panes of glass- none of the small, smokey windows that had been standard for so long. You could see clear out into the street from inside, and vice-versa, which was probably the point. There was no longer any need to hide, not from a purely legal standpoint.

“I’ve seen you before,” said the woman. 

Now, this part was new to becoming the official guardian of the queer community: people from that community would often get the sense that he was a known and trustworthy entity somewhere in the background of their lives, and had been for some time. It was usually quite subtle- that teaching student on the train had been quite eager to open up to him, after all. Sometimes, however, it hit humans a little stronger, and they were convinced that they must have met him previously.

Of course, given the state of things, it was never too unlikely that they had genuinely met before. “You were doing visits down at Broderip Ward, right?” she continued.

“Still am with some frequency, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale admitted. “When were you down there, if I might ask?”

“About two years ago,” she said. “There was that South African photojournalist going around taking photographs. You and a few other guys used to come in with food and a tea service for everyone, and he wanted your picture, but you said no?”

“It’s an old, outdated paranoia, but I do feel safer for not having my picture at the center of someone’s exhibit,” Aziraphale said. Mainly because it became more difficult for people to realize that he wasn’t aging when they were unlikely to stumble across photographs from decades gone by, but for obvious reasons he didn’t exactly spread that part around.

The woman nodded. She understood- she probably thought they were of an age. “My friend Alex was in a bad way,” she continued. “He’d moved down there, set up house in Vauxhall with his boyfriend, and then three months later they both tested positive.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said. “I’m so sorry. Did he-”

“They both went last year, within a month of one another,” she said. “And you? You had a nephew there you were visiting, when you weren’t bringing everyone tea and pastries, right?”

“Brett,” Aziraphale said. “He’s gone now too. I’ve got three other nephews and a niece there now, but they’re considered in much more stable condition.” Or as stable as they could have been, at least: AZT was not a pleasant drug to be on, though the four of them seemed to be escaping the more serious side effects thus far, and it did seem to be helping to keep the virus in check. 

The woman blinked up at him. He smiled back. “I have a lot of nephews, and no small number of nieces,” he explained. “It’s one of the benefits of being old enough for people to call you their Auntie.”

The confusion on the woman’s face cleared up. “I’m Sharon,” she said, thrusting out her free hand. “Sharon Fell.”

“I’m Ezra,” Aziraphale said. “Also Fell, if you can believe it.”

“No, really?” Sharon’s face split into a wide grin. “I’m from Ulverston, where do you come from?”

“London. The family’s been there for just about as long as there’s been a London, I think,” Aziraphale told her. “I’ve got the family bookshop- it’s five years out from its bicentennial.”

“That’s right, I remember now,” she said. “You kept giving away books along with the tea. Still in business, then?”

“Believe it or not, I make most of my money on restorations and appraisals,” Aziraphale said. “I’m actually on my way to the University of Salford on business right now. I just thought I’d pop by and see how the neighborhood was getting on.”

“Well, I won’t keep you then,” Sharon replied. “Good luck with your books.”

“Thank you!” Aziraphale said, and for the first time gave the leaflet in his hand a proper look. It was an advertisement, for a meeting, to discuss the establishment of the-

Of the Alan Turing Memorial Fund. 

_Oh._

That had been why he’d come up here, forty-one years previous: Alan’s death. He’d known him- they’d both known him, Crowley and himself. The British Intelligence community during WWII had been nearly as pseudo-incestuous as the British homosexual one. He’d kept in touch with Alan, after the war had ended. He’d talked to him, via the telephone, not long before he’d committed suicide. Aziraphale had thought he’d sounded fine. He’d been miserable while he was on the hormones, but the ‘treatment’ had run its course and he’d stopped taking them, and _he’d sounded fine_.

He’d called Crowley: the demon deserved to hear the news from a friendly source, and he’d needed to hear the demon’s voice. Crowley had sounded fine; Aziraphale had tried to sound fine, but had evidently not managed it, because Crowley had invited him up to stay for a few days. He’d accepted. Crowley had sounded fine, but he’d needed to see it with his eyes before he could possibly believe it. 

Crowley had picked him up directly from the train station, and they’d driven around aimlessly for a time. 

“I keep wondering if I shouldn’t write a report about it to Down Below,” Crowley had said finally. “A pointless waste of human life, and an apple. Sounds like the sort of thing they’d believe was me.”

Aziraphale had managed to nod. 

“Then again, maybe I’ll just wait to see if they give me a commendation all on their own,” Crowley had continued. “Come on, angel. Let’s get a few pints in you and get you settled into a hotel, yeah?”

They’d gotten more than a few pints into themselves, in the end, and they’d done it not terribly far from where Aziraphale was standing now. Nodding to himself, he tucked the leaflet into his inside jacket pocket.

“Is the Union Hotel still around?” he asked, before he could think better of it. He suppressed the urge to wince. He might have dated himself terribly, after all- the owner had been set to go to prison last he’d heard. 

“Yeah, it’s called the New Union Hotel now,” Sharon told him. “They just finished renovating- they made it bigger.”

There was a beat of silence. One of the drawbacks to doing this without Crowley was that there was no one to take such openings for him. He either had to leave it be, or be crude himself.

“But have they improved their technique at all?” Aziraphale asked, which he felt struck a middle distance well enough. 

“You’re asking the wrong woman, Ezra,” Sharon replied with a laugh. “I’m not that sort of girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Manto opened on Canal Street in 1991 with large pane-glass windows, it was a _very_ big deal.
> 
> [Broderip Ward](https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2019/october/20191003_Broderip_Ward) was a special AIDS ward in the now demolished Middlesex Hospital. It was run in a very unorthodox manner: patients were allowed to come and go, family members were allowed and encouraged to bring food in for their loved ones to eat (and bring enough to share) and patients were often greeted with hugs. The South African photojournalist here is [Gideon Mendel](http://gideonmendel.com/the-ward/), who does a lot of work documenting AIDS.
> 
> [The Alan Turing Memorial](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/alan-turing-memorial) became a reality in 2001. It sits in Sackville Park, overlooking Canal Street. My research indicated that the memorial was inspired by the 1986 play _Breaking the Code_ starring Derek Jacobi (as opposed to the 1996 movie _Breaking the Code_ , based on the play and also starring Derek Jacobi), so hopefully leaflets about trying to set that up in 1995 aren't too anachronistic. [Alan Turing](https://www.bl.uk/people/alan-turing) was most famous for being one of the minds to crack the Enigma code during WWII, and coming up with the basis for much of modern computing. He was then convicted of sodomy and sentenced to chemical castration within a decade of the war ending. He is widely and officially thought to have committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide- though some have contested this and said that the cyanide poisoning was accidental. 
> 
> [The New Union Hotel](https://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/tours/tour13/area13page40.html) is a real place, and it has been on Canal Street both figuratively and literally for a very long time.


	5. University of Salford

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A trigger warning for this chapter: there is some brief incidental misgendering of an OC, of the "complete strangers making assumptions based on how a trans person still mostly in the closet is presenting themselves" variety.

When Gabriel had dropped Aziraphale off at his bookshop back in 1985 with the strictest of admonishments to keep himself in check, Aziraphale had nodded, gone into his shop, and drunk a not inconsiderable amount of alcohol. He’d gotten just drunk enough that trying to perform a teensy weensy little miracle anyway seemed like a good idea, and when he’d found that the prohibition against unauthorized miracles was descriptive rather than proscriptive, he’d switched to water. He’d taken out his accounts, and assured himself that he wouldn’t actually need to miracle up anything to keep the lights on, and did the math for how much extra work he might need to take on in order to keep up his using rounds of takeaway and eating out- it worked out to basically none, so long as he steered clear of more upscale places like the Ritz.

He’d been sober again by the time the sun had risen and it was a decent hour for placing telephone calls. He’d called Crowley, and arranged to meet on a bus. He’d sat behind the demon and given him the barest bones version of events, or at least their consequences: he was on probation, and as there was going to be a corresponding increase Heaven’s monitoring of his activities and their visits to Earth to check in with him, they probably shouldn’t attempt to contact one another until 1990 at the earliest. Then he’d made a request: could Crowley please leave his coat? It had been black, as most of the demon’s clothing was, and it had suddenly occurred to him that if he couldn’t miracle his clothing black then he had nothing whatsoever to wear to funerals. 

And he was going to have to go to a lot of funerals. He’d had one that afternoon, as a matter of fact. 

Crowley, who rarely missed a chance to be bafflingly kind to Aziraphale, had shrugged out of his coat, turned it into something warm and waterproof that would fit Aziraphale well, and left it behind. Aziraphale had put in on himself, and then braced for a long few years. 

The years that followed _were_ long, but they were also busy, frenetic, and full. Heaven may not want him to perform any miracles to alleviate the AIDS crisis- if the probation itself wasn’t proof enough of that, his every request to perform a miracle tangentially related to relief being denied certainly did the trick- but they did want him to continue blending in with the humans. And his cover, his human identity, went around with several business cards he could give out reading _Ezra Fell, Homosexual Bookseller, Owner and Proprietor A.Z. Fell & Co._ and had done so since 1967. 

(They’d been a gift, after they were more or less decriminalized. Ronnie had almost certainly never intended for him to use them as actual business cards, but, well, he’d found them funny, and sometimes a bit of bluntness went a long way.)

So, really, when you thought about it, he was only following orders by throwing himself into the AIDS activism scene. 

Not that it was all, strictly speaking, activism. Oh, there was no shortage of fundraisers, petitions, marches, rallies, and all the other slow grinding actions that were needed to effect change on a large scale, but while this was happening people were _dying_ \- and it seemed to Aziraphale, for much of the early portion of his probationary period, that they were dying of malignant neglect as much as the virus. On many levels the response was _boggling_. First, people weren’t investing any effort or money into researching the disease, and then once they’d finally begun to look into it they persisted in treating it like some kind of punishment that somehow merited another punishment. This wasn’t a plague of the fourteenth century, and leper colonies had been declared unnecessary some time ago. There was no reason to even consider reverting to the barbarity of centuries gone by. 

But they had: talk of quarantine turned to talk of segregation turned to talk of letting nature take its course, letting God have Her vengeance… but it wasn’t true, and it wasn’t necessary at all, and he wanted, quite desperately, to not understand _why_.

But he did understand all too well. The crux of the matter, of course, was that a large number of people disliked gay people immensely, and were more than willing to use AIDS as an impetus to do all sorts of things that would have been a hard sell to the general populace a few short years previous. 

He’d tried explaining that to Gabriel, he really had. It wasn’t the disease, though that was bad enough. It was how people reacted to the fear it inspired that was damning, that he felt was grounds for intervention. He simply hadn’t been able to find the right words, however, to make him understand.

At any rate, he did everything he could to bring about some changes in public opinion and policy, and then when he’d finished making those rounds for the day he’d dealt with the personal side of things. There were sickbeds and hospital wards to visit, there were adolescents who’d heard he was someone they could turn to with questions and problems that they couldn’t tell any human adult currently in their lives, and there were funerals. 

There were so very many funerals. He’d had to make arrangements for quite a few of them, help in the preparations, be a pallbearer. He’d been a pallbearer for a man called Richard Yale who he’d barely even known- but Richard had been friends with Brett in the end, and he’d known very few people who were alive and well enough to carry his coffin by the time he’d died, so the job had fallen to Aziraphale to be the sixth man required. He’d had to get into a vicious row with several people to ensure that neither Hakim nor Emil were cremated. He’d been quite relieved when Pradeep’s family had stepped up to make certain that he _was_ cremated properly, as he hadn’t had the first clue how Sikh funerals worked. He still didn’t, really, for all that Granthi Sukhwinder Bhatti had been very gracious in answering his questions. He’d been very relieved to find that he could walk into the gurdwara without burning his feet or suffering any other symptoms that might have arisen when in the house of another deity, and then he’d gotten very paranoid that someone from his side might catch him in the temple of another god, and there was no way that would have ended well for anyone. With all that distraction, just about the only thing that sunk in was that he should take off his shoes, leave on his cap, and stand and sit in respectful silence as prompted, rather than attempting to follow the congregation along in prayers. 

He ended up taking on extra work at the bookshop as well. For one thing, he’d forgotten to factor in transportation costs into his budget- there would be no calling Crowley for a lift, and the bus seemed to be getting more and more expensive with every passing month. For another, neither condoms nor hot meals would ever be approved miracles while he was on probation- though flowers, strangely, had a good chance of going through. 

He discovered, much to his own shock, that he did actually need to eat- at least once a day, if he didn’t want his hands to start shaking. He still didn’t need to sleep, but dropping off for a few hours once a fortnight seemed to help things. He rather resented it. For the first time in a very long existence firmly lived at his own sedate pace, Aziraphale found that there simply weren’t enough hours in the day. 

It was something he thought of while watching Miss Nembhard go about her day. Bearing in mind that it was the afternoon when he finally caught up with her, he could not help but be impressed with her work ethic- and a little appalled. Surely it could not be healthy for her to be on the go so much?

She had her classes- she was a nursing student, apparently, which made sense. Phounebiel was one of Raphael’s ministering angels. Back in the day when epidemics were considered one of the evils which Heaven was meant to combat, she’d been in charge of mitigating the spread of disease. Of course she would call someone whose expertise aligned with her own. Miss Nembhard had three separate classes on Thursdays, and two separate meetings with professors, and then she made a quick stop to the student union and emerged carrying a large box. 

The box was full of donations- clothing, it looked like- which she took to the Albert Kennedy Trust before hurrying along to Salford Royal Hospital. She had a short shift (for the medical world’s use of the term “short shift”) there, which she spent doing what Aziraphale knew was a lot of stressful, complicated work. Perhaps she wasn’t hearing the call because she, like many humans these days, heard it less as a calling to the Lord, and more as a calling to do good, and now she felt compelled to work and work, until he rather felt like he should find her something to eat- one of the very few things he _hadn’t_ seen her do yet, or so it seemed. Pity this hospital didn’t seem to have the same open policy about food as Broderip Ward- he’d really been hoping that would catch on. 

He didn’t have to bring her anything, as it happened. She slipped out for a smoking break, and met with another nurse who had some kind of melted cheese and meat sandwich ready and waiting to be split between them.

“You sure you don’t want the whole thing?” she asked.

“Positive,” the other nurse replied, patting his belly. “You’re keeping me on my diet, Lexie.”

 _Lexie_ was the name Miss Nemhard’s friends used for her. To everyone else- and often in front of everyone else- she was _Alex_. Aziraphale had his suspicions, but it wasn’t until the bus driver addressed her as _son_ , and she grimaced but didn’t correct him, that he began to feel confident that they were correct. 

That might also be a reason she wasn’t heeding the call. Presuming the ministry was the end goal, well- most religious organizations were not particularly welcoming to transsexuals. Many seemed to go out of their way to be quite hostile, point in fact.

Actually, he could only think of a handful that would even consider ordaining her, which might also pose a problem if she was not already affiliated with said churches. The dossier from Heaven was using what he presumed to be her correct pronouns, even if they weren’t the ones she expected from strangers passing on the street, and he was pretty sure that Heaven kept tabs on which churches ordained women, so he wasn’t expected to make a Catholic priest out of her, at least.

He saw her to her home, decided against entering even if she wouldn’t be able to perceive his presence, and placed a little blessing on her that would allow him to track her down again. Then he sat down at the bus stop, and pulled out the dossier. There was no notice of what religious affiliations she might have- or might not have. That was another potential wrinkle. Neither Upstairs nor Downstairs had ever quite managed to wrap their heads around things like agnosticism or atheism. Originally, it had been considered as something which was probably automatically a bad thing, but a large majority of those souls seemingly ended up in neither place, and of those who did, namely those who professed atheism for political reasons while continuing to believe in private, well…

Much like with the relevant avowed religious convictions, those of avowed irreligious convictions were pretty evenly split between the two. 

He was going to have to do some digging, see if he couldn’t round out the dossier. He might have to stay until Sunday, and see if she went to any particular house of worship. He might even have the entire religion wrong- she might be Jewish, or Muslim. He was presuming that she was Christian- or meant to be- in much the same way he was presuming that she was meant to be ordained. 

She probably wasn’t Muslim. Women weren’t imams, not in this part of the world at least. Quite possibly not even in China anymore, where the practice had once been, if not usual, then certainly not unheard of. 

Oh bother, he should have gotten himself a hotel room.

Well, that was easily rectified, at least. He did believe a room at the Union Hotel- or the New Union Hotel, rather- had just miraculously opened up. And, by mundane coincidence, a bus headed in the direction of Canal Street had just now pulled up. 

He smiled at the driver, pulled out the miraculously correct amount of change from his pocket, and sat down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do highly recommend asking someone- or even just asking Google- what to expect if you end up at a funeral run along the lines of a religion you don't practice. Otherwise you might end up like me, the dumbo who saw people lining up at her orchestra director's funeral, got on line, received a weird little wafer, put it in her handbag, and promptly forgot all about it until six months later when the handbag was upended and it turned out that she'd been carrying around the body of Christ all this time.
> 
> I went back and forth on what terminology to use, because while trans and transgender are the preferred terms today back during the 1990s transsexual would have been more common. I'm completely open to criticism on this (I'm open to criticism on pretty much everything, but this is something that I feel a bit shaky on, so. Feedback is welcome.) Side note: this is why I had to cut out QUILTBAG from this fic, even though I tend to headcanon that Aziraphale would like that particular attempt at an umbrella acronym best. As far as I can tell, it didn't exist until the mid-aughties.
> 
> There is indeed a long-standing tradition of female imams- or nu ahongs- in the Hui populations of Western China. They generally lead prayers and preach at women-only mosques. 
> 
> And good news everyone: Crowley's finally going to be appearing in the next chapter!


	6. The Working Spanner

The bus was headed in the direction of Canal Street, but the stop on its route closest by Canal Street turned out to be clear on the other end of the neighborhood from where he needed to be. He arranged things so that as far as the hotel was concerned he’d already checked in, and started off walking.

And then he stopped, and considered. Miss Nembhard’s place of employ wasn’t terribly far away, and as Miss Nembhard herself was hopefully catching some well-deserved rest, he might as well get some idea what kind of place it was that she worked. 

He headed off, and found the place easily enough. There was an absolutely preposterous neon sign above the door, one which not only spelled out the name, but showed a scantily clad woman pole dancing around a spanner. 

Ah. One of those places, then. He did hope this was the matter of someone misplacing their straight man’s establishment, rather than a lesbian bar. He’d have to do a fair bit of changing before he could get in the door otherwise. 

But, no. A quick glance at the crowd of people waiting to get inside revealed them to be a pretty mixed group, gender-wise. Possibly the answer was neither, then. 

Aziraphale shrugged, and got on the line. He could afford the wait, but he wasn’t sure what the hours were, and so one group of women suddenly got a hankering for karaoke and left the line, a pair of men got to chatting and decided to take things to a more private venue, and three more people suddenly realized the time and thought that they should perhaps get some rest and show up to work tomorrow after all. He spread things out, and ended up listening to someone talk up herbal tea parties to the rest of the line. He gathered from context that these tea parties didn’t involve a soothing cup of chamomile.

The bouncer guarding the door looked him up and down when it was his turn to enter. 

“You sure you want in, mate?” He asked. “This doesn’t look like it’s your scene.”

“I noticed,” Aziraphale replied. “I’m meeting a friend, and then probably buying a lot of drinks.”

The bouncer shrugged. “Well, it’s a quiet night,” he said, and let him in. 

Aziraphale had to respectfully disagree. The night was extraordinarily loud: he could feel the vibrations all the way up his legs, to say nothing of what was currently being done to his eardrums. He winced and performed a quick miracle so that he wouldn’t hear the music. That was… well, less loud, certainly. 

It was a very rowdy place, full of screaming and frantic dancing. At one point as Aziraphale was still trying to make his way over to the bar everyone within reach of the wall turned and began to bang on it. It wasn’t a particularly clean place either- his shoes kept wanting to stick to the floor. He performed another miracle, glad that Crowley already had a reputation for minor inconveniences- it would hopefully explain all these frivolous miracles when Gabriel inevitably took a look at his expense report. 

Aziraphale finally pushed his way over to the bar, ensured that the open stool was clean, and took a seat. From here he had a much better view of the stage, which given the volume he’d encountered upon entering he’d expected would be taken up in entirety by overly-large speakers and perhaps one of those disc jockey chaps.

There were a lot of large speakers, but they were hanging above the stage, which hopefully prevented the performers from suffering permanent hearing loss. The stage itself was currently occupied by-

By-

 _Well,_ Aziraphale thought, face burning. _That would explain why he didn’t answer any of my calls_

Crowley was a) presenting male once more and b) pole dancing in a decidedly insubstantial outfit, much to the rowdy, drunken delight of the crowd. 

_My word,_ Aziraphale thought, watching Crowley spin himself around using nothing but his ankles. 

It wasn’t even that what little clothing he wore was painted on, though that was bad enough. He was sporting tattoos all the way down his arms, he had a little pair of glasses that did almost nothing to cloak his serpentine eyes clinging to the end of his nose, and as he spun Aziraphale could see every shift of corded muscle on his slender frame, all the strength he normally held in reserve on display. 

All his flexibility too. Aziraphale found himself loosening his bow tie as Crowley landed on the floor, one leg thrown nearly over his shoulder. It was as though his throat was suddenly too thick for him to swallow with it properly fastened.

 _Well, old boy, you’re in trouble, there’s no doubt about it,_ he thought. He didn’t even want to contemplate how often he’d thought those words, tried to admonish himself with them. 

It wasn’t working now, either.

 _Get ahold of yourself, Aziraphale,_ he told himself firmly. _He’ll notice you soon._

And if Crowley noticed _this_ Aziraphale wasn’t quite certain what either one of them would do. That _did_ work as an admonishment, as it happened. 

Crowley stood back up, hips undulating in what Aziraphale assumed to be time with the beat and a smirk playing on his lips, and Aziraphale forced down his blush. Crowley leaped back up onto the pole and pivoted himself around using his ankle and the crook of his arm, and Aziraphale folded his hands in his lap and forced himself to sit still. Crowley changed his grip on the pole rapidly- at one point it seemed very much like the only part of him that was actually touching the pole was his hip- and Aziraphale schooled his features.

And then, at long last, Crowley’s eyes met Aziraphale’s. They widened comically, and he slipped, just a bit. He recovered quickly, hooking one leg up high up on the pole and spinning a few extra times to get himself back up to the proper height. When next their eyes met, Crowley’s eyes were narrowed in question. 

The seat next to Aziraphale found itself miraculously vacated, and he tipped his head towards it. Crowley gave him the barest of nods, and then returned to his routine. Tearing his eyes away at long last, Aziraphale flagged down the bartender. 

“What’s the best thing you have a bottle of?” he asked. 

“I’ve got some Blue Nun,” the bartender said with a shrug. 

The sounded just fine to Aziraphale, but Crowley would hate it. “Anything less sweet?”

“What do you want, oaked Chardonnay?” the bartender asked. 

Aziraphale shuddered. “Thank you, but no.” He thought about it for a moment. “Something paint stripping, perhaps?”

“I can get you a bottle of vodka, but it’ll cost you,” the bartender warned him. 

“I’m good for it,” Aziraphale told him. “Good for tipping too. Bring over two glasses as well, if you please?”

That settled it. The bottle arrived with two shot glasses, just as Crowley left the stage to thunderous applause.


	7. The Job

“Calling a human to the Lord” was a vague and nonspecific mandate in theory, with a wide variety of ways to answer. A human could heed the call and end up a mystic, or an army chaplain, or a nun. They could minister the sick, or inspire their congregants, or compose hymns, or simply live on their own contemplating Her glory. They might found a new religious movement; they might become a saint.

More and more often, these days, a call to the Lord was answered with becoming a member of the clergy. Upstairs prefered it that way- there was paperwork and ranks and all manner of other things that made the process seem very tidy when viewed from on high.

As a Principality, Aziraphale was given discretion to call a human to the Lord once per quarter- which was to say, once every twenty five years, give or take a few critical period of history when he’d been granted special dispensation for more, and those first few centuries when there hadn’t been very much in the way of humans to call (and those first few centuries after the Flood when there had also not been very much in the way of humans to call). Generally, he took advantage of that right, as it seemed very much like the done thing. He’d never called anyone who had not answered, something which he hadn’t thought notable until his disciplinary hearing in the wake of Oscar Wilde’s first trial, when it had come up as a point in his favor. Apparently, that was rare. 

Most of the humans he had called ended up living in relative obscurity, remembered by their families and in the histories of the communities they served, if anyone but Aziraphale remembered them at all: Na Siqing, Alice Palmer, Thomas Jeffrey Benson, Aziz Abdullah, Aulus Gaius Lucius, Zeynep Mustafa Pasha, Gao Xuan, Godric Halfdane, Rohaise of Godstow, Salek Berman, Katherine of Dunwich, Duncan the Tame, Ilya Rivlin, Leon Doukas, Rhys ab Owain, Khadijah bint Ali al-Masri, Shulamit die Nachtigall, Arsinoe of Alexandria, Dovid HaLevi, Gereon Kaloesthes, Alys vch Gruffydd, Ambrose the Unwise, Jean-Gaspard D’Orleans, Hatice Suleiman, Ilyas bin Yusuf, Cynefrith of Scergeat, Endurance Hamilton… the list went on and on. If he set out to list everyone, it would probably take hours to do it properly. Sometimes the humans he had called ended up having some importance to the wider world: he was particularly proud of Ferenc David, and of Benjamin Lay. Sometimes it had been a tragedy: the world had not been ready for Beruriah bat Hananiah, and the destruction of the Second Temple had been a dangerous time to be a learned sage, and history- Rashi’s in particular- had not been kind to her memory when that, at least, should have been a blessing. But no matter who remembered their stories or how they ended up being told, when he’d called, they’d answered. 

He might have been selected to help Miss Nembhard because he was Crowley’s long-standing foe, and Heaven presumed him capable of outmaneuvering him. That was what Gabriel had implied when he’d given him his instructions. He might also have been selected for his perfect track record. If he was reading between the lines correctly, and Phounebiel had requested him specifically instead of the vast cogs of the ethereal bureaucracy merely spitting out his name, that might be why. 

As he sat at the bar and waited for Crowley, a drag queen by the name of Brie Delicious replaced him on stage. Aziraphale spent the majority of her act contemplating the third option: he might have, in essence, been given this assignment because he was gay.

Not that Heaven would think of it in those terms. To Heaven he was soft, if they even had a word for him and his differences, and this was just one of his softer spots. Still, even that much acknowledgement was new, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

It had been well over a hundred years since he’d gotten the responsibilities of being the Principality of Queers- since he’d been granted the rights and privileges. Heaven never paid much mind to it unless he overstepped his bounds, and he preferred it that way. The less Heaven knew of his personal life- the less they even suspected about the mere existence of his personal life- the better off he was. The better off _everyone_ was, really. He did his work, and he wasn’t incompetent, so Heaven got an experienced field agent from the deal. The queer community got a protector, advocate, and a bit of divine inspiration here and there. Aziraphale got to be Ezra Fell for a time (and before that Azariah Fell, and still occasionally Azalea when he felt like indulging in a spot of drag). It was a perfectly amicable arrangement. 

It was hard to ignore, though, how much this assignment had to do with his self-appointed duties. They were on Canal Street. This establishment, whatever it was, was at least trying to pose as a gay venue, to judge from the entertainment. The matter of Miss Nembhard’s gender meant that a great deal more delicacy was required in getting her to a place to truly heed the call of the Lord, and that wasn’t something most in Heaven would understand. He honestly would not have expected anyone in Heaven to notice, much less notice and decide to call upon his expertise. 

He should be happy about this development, he supposed. That had been his point from the start: that these people, his people, had special circumstances which required special knowledge and experience to handle compassionately, correctly. This could be a sign that Heaven was finally listening to him- that Heaven, at long last, wanted to help. 

He didn’t really want additional scrutiny, though he was decently certain that this particular assignment wasn’t Heaven checking in on him. He just-

Well. He wasn’t sure how he felt about being out at work, he supposed. He didn’t particularly like the notion that he’d been noticed either. It wasn’t something he’d ever considered declaring for himself, not to Heaven at least. 

Or, well. He’d almost done it, once, ten years ago. _You can’t take me away from them,_ he’d nearly told Gabriel. _I’m their aunt. More than that- I’m one of them._ Thank God he’d managed to keep himself in check. Heaven wouldn’t have known what to make of that, and protests so rarely did any good, after all. If he’d kept pressing the matter, who could say what would have happened? He probably would have never seen the Earth again. The disciplinary hearing and resultant probation had been harsh enough, and he’d given up on trying to convince Gabriel and the others of the necessity of his intervention after the first rounds of debriefings had taken place. He’d been left in that lobby waiting for nearly a week afterwards while they had the preliminary deliberations as to what his sentence would be. He’d half convinced himself that they’d forgotten he existed by the time his name was called. 

It was bad enough, in their eyes, what he’d tried to do, for all that he could present an argument that made it seem like he’d believed himself to be enacting Heaven’s will, and for all that that was true, that he’d believed very strongly in what he’d tried to do. But what would he even say if they’d done some more digging and found out about the actions he _couldn’t_ justify? At the time, it hadn’t even been twenty years since he’d made that withdrawl from Tehom. If anyone had found out about it, if they knew that he’d taken from the very waters of creation itself and tried to trace who he’d given that thermos to...

That was the other thing, too, of course. The part he wasn’t so proud of. The truth was that he rather relied on using his duties as Principality of Queers to provide a smokescreen for the time he spent with Crowley, and indeed the Arrangement as a whole. Gabriel’s eyes nearly glazed over whenever he mentioned this part of his duties, and he was able to pass off a great deal of otherwise dubious miracles that way. If Heaven was going to pay attention, actually pay attention, then he was going to have to figure something out. 

But not tonight. No, tonight they were in Manchester, and therefore well away from prying eyes.

“You’re lucky you came tonight,” Crowley said, sliding onto the stool next to him. “I was chauffeuring Hastur and Ligur around until late last night. That could have gotten messy. Messier.”

They were safe from prying eyes from _his_ side, at least. 

“They’ve gone back Down Below, I take it?” Aziraphale asked, sliding the still full shot glass towards him. 

“Yeah. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” Crowley knocked back his glass and grimaced. “Vodka? Satan, what’s the occasion? And aren’t you supposed to be in America right now?”

“I was in America,” Aziraphale replied. “And then I was recalled. Do you know a Miss Nembhard?”

Crowley frowned down at his shot glass until it obligingly refilled itself. “Do you mean Vicky?”

“I’ve never heard her go by that name. Alex and Lexie seem to be more common,” Aziraphale replied. “She’s a nursing student at the University of Salford?”

“Yeah, that’s Vicky. That’s sort of her stage name. She does drag a few nights out of the week here- she’s got this whole persona based off of Queen Victoria, only able to take a joke,” Crowley studied him. “Why, what’s your interest? Come to save her from a life of sin?”

Aziraphale snorted. “Hardly. If it were up to me, all I’d be doing would be getting out of her way.”

“But it’s not up to you,” Crowley surmised. 

“No,” Aziraphale admitted. “I’m afraid she’s caught the eye of one of the Virtues.”

“Which? Chastity? Patience?”

“The Virtue Phounebiel,” Aziraphale informed him. 

“Walked into that one,” Crowley muttered. 

“She’s got her heart set upon Miss Nembhard heeding her call to the Lord, and I’m here to determine what the hold up is,” Aziraphale continued. “Right now Heaven’s working theory is that the holdup is you, which is less than ideal, so the sooner we can clear this up the easier we both can rest. I might be able to return to my tour of the States, and you can return to-” He paused. While his attention had been focused on Crowley, the acts on stage had changed, and now there were two women playing the ukulele and singing directly into one another’s faces in what was clearly meant to be a sexually provocative manner. “Crowley, what is this place? Aside from being dreadfully sticky, that is.”

“This? This is the latest iteration of your gentlemen’s clubs,” Crowley told him. 

“It most certainly is not,” Aziraphale replied, feeling quite affronted. 

Crowley threw his head back and laughed. “Alright, alright, you’ve got me. It’s not. What it is is a version of your gentlemen’s clubs, but for tourists.”

“I don’t follow,” Aziraphale said. 

“It’s like this: you know all those parties they have here on Wednesday nights?” Crowley asked. 

“I live in Soho,” Aziraphale replied. “It would be difficult for me not to hear of them.”

“Well word of them has traveled a bit farther than Soho. It’s the hottest thing going right now, and everyone wants a piece of the action. They want to have their stag dos and hen nights here. They want to show off how cool and edgy they are to their mates in the office. They want to feel like they’re part of the scene, if only for the night.” Crowley raised his arms to indicate the whole of the club. “That’s what this is: a little Canal Street charcuterie board for the tourist to enjoy.”

Aziraphale, who had finished two shots while Crowley spoke, poured himself another. “So, your doing, I take it?”

“Meh,” Crowley said. “The place was already here. I just made it popular.”

“I see,” Aziraphale said. He took another shot. “You couldn’t have made it clean?”

Crowley laughed at him again, and took the bottle of vodka back. 

“You know, I didn’t think the Church had relaxed enough for letting Vicky in. Not big on women ministers, much less women of her mold,” Crowley said thoughtfully, after they’d each had another shot.

“Well, the Roman Catholic Church isn’t open to women clergy, but the Church of England ordained their first female ministers last year,” Aziraphale said.

“Guess I’m going to have to start telling those two apart,” Crowley said. 

“At any rate, I know of a few nonconformist denominations that would be glad of her, and there’s always-” Aziraphale cut himself off as something occurred to him. 

“What?” Crowley asked. 

“Chaplaincy,” Aziraphale said. “I’m thinking perhaps in a hospital. That fits with both Phounebiel’s dominion and Miss Nembhard’s course of study. It would probably be easier to wrangle than ministry too. They do nondenominational chaplaincy, don’t they?”

They’d built up a rhythm of passing the bottle to whoever wasn’t speaking. Crowley poured himself a second shot before sliding the rest back to Aziraphale. “You’re overlooking something,” Crowley said. 

“Oh?”

“Yeah. What if she doesn’t want to get involved with religion in any capacity? What if she just wants to be a nurse?”

“That’s a possibility,” Aziraphale acknowledged. “Though I would really prefer to not have to report that outcome to Upstairs.”

Crowley grimaced. 

“Why?” Aziraphale asked. “Do you know something?”

“I know a lot of things, thank you,” Crowley retorted. 

“Do you know something that makes you believe that she would be inclined one way or another?” Aziraphale clarified.

Crowley’s grimace deepened. He scowled deeply into his shot glass.

“You do know something,” Aziraphale cried. 

“Yeah, yeah, she might have mentioned a church. Or whatever the Unitarians call their houses of worship these days,” Crowley admitted. 

“Oh! Well that’s splendid news,” Aziraphale said. The Unitarians were one of the very few denominations that would ordain her, no question about it.

“Is it?” Crowley asked. “I mean- look, angel. Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s what she wants to do with her life, does it?”

“It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t wish to do so either,” Aziraphale replied. He hesitated for a moment before asking “Does she enjoy her work here?” Aziraphale wouldn’t- not in this venue, at least- but Miss Nembhard’s tastes didn’t have to align with his own. 

“Not especially,” Crowley admitted. “She likes being called by the right pronouns, I guess, and everyone's a girl in the drag game. And apparently when she started the boss tried to tell her she wasn’t pale enough to pull off Queen Victoria, and she enjoys sticking it to him. And it pays well enough- I know she’s saving up, and her rent is horrible so she really needs the cash flow.”

Aziraphale hummed, considering. 

“She’s not here tonight,” Crowley said. “She should be here tomorrow, Saturday and Wednesday, though.”

“That’s good to know,” Aziraphale said. “The schedule Heaven gave me is dreadfully incomplete.”

“Have you been following her all day then?” Crowley asked. 

“I’ve been discrete!” Aziraphale protested. “She could hardly have known I was there!”

Crowley laughed. “Still a bit creepy, you have to admit.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “I suppose there’s nothing for it,” he said. “I’ll just have to keep on her for a few days and get a better feel for things.”

“I’ll come with,” Crowley said. 

“You will?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Yeah, of course,” Crowley said. “I can’t have you wandering around my city unsupervised, can I?”

“I did try to call,” Aziraphale told him. “I dare say I rather filled up your ansaphone.”

“My ansaphone wouldn’t dare to be filled up,” Crowley said. “Where are you staying? You have gotten yourself a hotel room, right?”

“Yes. I’m over at the New Union Hotel,” Aziraphale said. 

“Of course you are, I don’t know why I bothered asking,” Crowley said. “How’s about we meet up? Say maybe ten o’clock?”

“In the morning, correct?” Aziraphale asked. 

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Yes, in the morning.” He knocked back another shot, and pushed himself upright. “Just give me a minute to make sure Caleb can cover my shifts for the next few days. He should be able to- he’s always looking for work- but just let me make sure.”

“Oh, that’s rather nice of-”

“Encouraging greed!” Crowley called over his shoulder. 

Aziraphale smiled, and downed the demon’s abandoned shot along with his own.

“Do you want me to call you a taxi?” the bartender asked. 

“That’s not necessary,” Aziraphale demurred. He was beginning to feel a light buzz, but millenia of experience with alcohol had granted him a rather hearty tolerance for the substance. 

“Are you sure?” the bartender pressed. 

“Quite,” Aziraphale said, finishing off the dregs of the bottle on principle.

“How can you be sure you’re going to be able to walk in ten minutes?” The bartender was beginning to sound a bit frazzled. Crowley emerged from backstage, caught his eye, and nodded: they were good to go.

“Practice,” Aziraphale replied shortly. He settled his tab, left a generous tip next to the empty bottle, and was off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Ferenc David](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferenc_D%C3%A1vid), [Benjamin Lay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lay), and [Beruriah bat Hananiah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruriah) were all real people, of enough significance to warrant their own wikipedia page. 
> 
> Tehom is a term corresponding to the pre-Creation state of life, the universe, and everything, sometimes referred to as primordial waters. 
> 
> Because I don't believe I explained this earlier: Wednesday nights were gay nights at the Hacienda, a very large and important part of the clubbing scene in Manchester. Those nights very quickly became a very big deal, drawing dedicated party-goers from as far away as mainland Europe.


	8. The New Union

He’d last arranged a meet up with Crowley last year, just after their quarterly reviews, so they could compare notes and hopefully get some idea about what the coming years would bring. Aziraphale had arrived first, settling in the booth of a pub that was only slightly more lively than was his usual wont. It was out of sight of the television set above the bar, the selection of food wasn’t bad, and the selection of beer was actually quite good.

The bartender had been attentive and charming. Aziraphale had let himself drink it in for a few moments longer than was strictly necessary to place his order and get their beer.

Crowley had sauntered in, relief evident in their face as they took him in.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale had greeted them. Crowley had thrown themself into the seat opposite him, and stolen one of his chips.

“Hullo, angel,” they had replied. “Hell was terrible, in case you were wondering. How was Heaven? Just the same?”

Aziraphale had been halfway to nodding when he’d caught himself. “Not terrible,” he’d said instead. “Not terrible at all, actually.”

“Oh?” Crowley had asked, perking up a bit.

“I mean, what would it mean if both our sides were terrible?” Aziraphale had continued. “What would be the point?”

Crowley had deflated slightly. Before they could come up with some kind of response, the cricket match commentator suddenly had a Hellish voice, calling out “Crowley!”

Crowley had sworn under their breath and snapped the rest of the pub in quiescence. Aziraphale had sat very still, listening to them deal with their boss “Yes, Lord Dagon, of course, Lord Dagon, right away, Lord Dagon...”

“I have to go,” Crowley had said once they’d returned to their booth.

“Of course,” Aziraphale had replied. "Take care, dear demon.”

“See you around, angel,” Crowley had said, grabbing their beer with one hand and snapping the rest of the people in the pub back on with the other.

Aziraphale had finished up his meal, and then relocated to the bar. The bartender wasn’t quite so attentive to the other patrons, he noticed, and he wasn’t giving anyone else free refills. So long as he was here, he might as well make a proper night out of it.

It was a bad habit of his. The sex he had when things with Heaven left him feeling restless and unsettled for reasons he didn’t care to examine, that was a very bad habit indeed. But it wasn’t technically against the rules- which said, quite clearly, that procreating with humans was off limits, but did _not_ mention fornicating-and it kept him from doing worse. Fornicating with a demon, for example.

Aziraphale was just finishing up a late breakfast when Crowley appeared, fifteen minutes early and wearing an outfit that caused not less than half the patrons to stare, the combination of trousers so tight they must have been miracled on and his highly-tattooed arms proving electrifying.

“Really, Crowley?” Aziraphale hissed, trying not to blush. It was obvious that the demon knew exactly what sort of effect he was having on people and enjoying it greatly.

“What can I say, I love watching them get all worked up over nothing,” Crowley replied, indicating his shirt. “This is the most fun I’ve had since the Byzantines were all up in arms about Greens vs Blues.”

Aziraphale blinked, noticing what was printed on the T-shirt for the first time. “Oh, right. There is a bit of bad blood between Liverpool and Manchester in football, isn’t there?”

“Ha! That’s one way of putting it,” Crowley said with a smirk. “So, Vicky. What’s on her itinerary today?”

“Besides working at your house of ill repute starting at nine this evening? Haven’t the foggiest,” Aziraphale said. “Why? Do you have any idea where she might be going?”

“She’s got a class sometime late in the afternoon,” Crowley reported. “Not sure when, though, and I’m not sure what she’s got on in the morning.”

“She hasn’t left yet,” Aziraphale’s blessing would have alerted him otherwise. “Hopefully she’s having a bit of lie down.”

“I thought encouraging sloth was my game.”

“It’s not a sin if you’ve earned it honestly,” Aziraphale said. “Which she has more than done, if her activities yesterday are any indication.”

Crowley made an indistinct grumbling noise, but otherwise didn’t reply.

“Do you mind terribly if I ask a personal question?” Aziraphale said after a moment.

“So long as you don’t mind if I don’t answer,” Crowley replied.

“What’s with the-” Aziraphale indicated his own arms, before adding with a grimace “Tats? Is that what they’re called now?”

Crowley snorted. “They definitely aren’t now that you’ve said that,” he said. “And anyway, it’s a business thing. Before I switched over to the dancing gig, I was starting a trend at this tattoo/piercing place.”

“You’re several centuries too late to start a tat trend,” Aziraphale informed him.

Crowley rolled his eyes and groaned. “No, no. I’ll tell you this story only if you’ll promise me that you’ll stop calling them that.”

Aziraphale grimaced but acquiesced. “Oh, very well then. I’ll stop.”

“Thank Someone,” Crowley said. “Right, so. I came up here after you left for the States, no real plan, just didn’t want to either sleep or work too hard, and one night this woman started to get very worked up about my snake.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow at the phrasing. “By that I presume you mean the mark on your face.”

“Yeah, she thought it was a tattoo, and she was really impressed. You can see the scales up close, you know. It’s real delicate work, making ink look like that.”

“I’d imagine so.”

The mark on Crowley’s face wasn’t actually made of ink, of course. It also wasn’t the burn Aziraphale had once taken it to be, or the brand he would later fear it was. It was, rather, a patch of actual snakeskin scale- something of Crowley’s true nature that could not be hidden except in plain sight, rather like his eyes.

It wasn’t the only patch of scale on him either- though the patches on scale running along the soles of his feet were a matter of will and spite. The logic behind _those_ patches went like this: first, that crawling could be defined as a movement made with your belly to the ground, and second, that if the bottom of your feet was also scale from your belly then you would be moving on your belly, and third, that these two facts in combination meant that Crowley was technically crawling on his belly even when he was stood upright.

“In conclusion: suck it, Mother,” Crowley had said when he’d finished explaining it to Aziraphale for the first time.

(Not literally, of course. They’d had that conversation in Merv sometime during the third century AD- the English language was not local, and not yet invented, and had definitely not spawned that particular combination of words. Still, that was as good a translation as any.)

Aziraphale had shushed him frantically in reply. (That required no translation at all.)

“Anyway, she asked if I wanted a job, and I couldn’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t want a job, so I said yes and she hired me on the spot,” Crowley said, in the here and now.

Aziraphale mulled that one over for a moment. “Did she believe you’d tattooed your own face?”

“Nope,” Crowley said brightly. “But she was hoping that people would look at me and think that she did. So I signed on to work at her tattoo/piercing parlor.”

“Ah, I see,” Aziraphale replied. “So she became your mark, then?”

“Oh no,” Crowley said. “Come on, angel, you know how I work by now. Why work on one person when you can make dozens if not hundreds of people angry?”

“With tattoos?” Aziraphale asked.

“With _highly regrettable_ tattoos,” Crowley corrected him, pointing to a spot on his arm upon which was written in Japanese characters _Translation Needed_.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to explain the joke, dear boy.”

“It’s like this: you remember how popular arabesque was for a while there? Wait, no, I’ll do you one better: do you remember Japonisme?”

“Yes?” Aziraphale said cautiously.

“This is like that, but there’s not even a smidgen of artistic merit, and it’s permanently etched into people’s skin,” Crowley explained, with a terribly smug expression on his face. “It’s something that people getting these highly regrettable tattoos do not understand but trust looks cool… until someone who can actually read what they’ve put on themselves tells them how badly they’ve messed up.”

“I’m sorry, do you mean to tell me people who cannot read Japanese, are getting Japanese phrases _which they cannot read_ tattooed onto themselves?” Aziraphale asked.

“Badly mistranslated Japanese phrases,” Crowley clarified.

“But why would- why would you tattoo something on yourself that you didn’t understand?” Aziraphale asked. “Particularly writing? Words have meaning, you know.”

“Because it looks cool,” Crowley explained. “And because they can’t understand it, and presume no one else can understand it, it’s also mysterious.”

“But wouldn’t they at least look up the phrase they wanted before committing to indelibly marking themselves with it?”

“Nope!”

“Oh, dear.”

“Anyway, that’s actually how I met Vicky,” Crowley said. “Tattoo parlor was right across the street. She was out, in full drag, having a light, and I tried to talk her into getting a piercing. _What’s the point in being Queen Victoria if you don’t have a Prince Albert?_ was what I said, if I recall correctly.”

Aziraphale, who had been sipping the remainder of his tea, choked.

“You aren’t supposed to know what that is!” Crowley cried.

Aziraphale banished the tea clogging his airway with a wave of his hand. “I live in Soho,” he said, for what must have been the eight hundredth time since WWII. “Do you have any idea what sort of establishments I’ve shared walls with over the years?”

“I don’t know, I don’t really pay attention to that sort of thing. Unless you’ve brought them up, I don’t really have a reason to care,” Crowley said.

“Do you even know your own neighbors?” Aziraphale asked, suddenly aware that Crowley had never mentioned any such people.

Crowley shrugged. “There’s a little old lady on the floor below me who thinks I’m a friendly vampire or something. And I keep getting commendations for Mr. Harrison on the eighth floor, so I go out of my way to not interact with him.” He regarded Aziraphale for a moment. “Why? Who have you got?”

“Well, not a great deal at the moment, actually,” Aziraphale said. “Real estate developers, you know. They’re pushing all the character out of the neighborhood.” He wasn’t particularly worried- this was but the latest round gentrification he’d weathered, and he’d gotten the bookshop listed during his probation, when he hadn’t been able to rely on his powers to protect his shop. The weirdness of Soho would come slinking back in soon enough, and he’d be there to greet it when it did. “There is a lovely couple across the street who opened a cafe just recently. And there’s a tailor’s shop down the service alley that specializes in lingerie and cortisery.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Crowley asked, sotto voice.

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale told him, nonplussed. “Why? What would you call it?”

Crowley mumbled indistinctly and went a bit pink around the ears. “Anyway,” he said, much more loudly. “So long as we’re going to be creepy stalkers anyway-”

“Good Lord, Crowley,” Aziraphale chided.

“Don’t bring Her into this,” Crowley said sternly. “At any rate, are you finished with your breakfast yet? Because if we’re going to spend all day tailing her we should really be outside her home and ready to go when she steps out the door.”

“Could you perhaps find some way of phrasing that which doesn’t make us sound like serial killers?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley visibly thought that over. “Nah, I don’t think so,” he replied after a moment.

Aziraphale heaved a sigh, placed the miraculously correct amount of money on the table, and stood. “Very well then. I presume you have your car with you?”

“Parked her just outside,” Crowley assured him, and held the door open for him as they left. “Got her freshly inspected and everything.”

“Did you?”

“That’s what it says on the paperwork.”

Smiling gently, Aziraphale followed him out onto the sidewalk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm mostly likely not going to be updating this until next week (so, the fifth of June) due to this week in retail already kicking my ass, and also my vague hope that I'll be able to get the next part of "Unexpected" up.


	9. Hulme

Crowley parked the Bentley down the street from Miss Nembhard’s abode, wards in place to keep the two of them from being noticed. They worked a little too well. They’d barely been parked for ten minutes before a policeman came and began to write them a ticket.

“OI!” Crowley yelled, leaning an improbable amount of his body out of the window. The policeman jumped, startled. “Are you blind? We’re idling, not parked!”

Aziraphale took advantage of the man’s distraction to light his little ticketbook on fire. The policeman dropped it, and left without further ado.

“Bloody nuisance, that bunch. That’s the sixth time they’ve tried to write the Bentley a ticket this month,” Crowley grumbled.

“There ought to be a law,” Aziraphale teased, turning away slightly so that Crowley wouldn’t catch sight of his grin. He doubted he managed it- he could see Crowley rolling his eyes in reply, after all, a gesture Aziraphale was only able to infer from behind his sunglasses due to the length of their association.

“So, what is it about Vicky that Upstairs wants so badly anyway?” Crowley asked after a moment.

“I have no idea,” Aziraphale admitted. “The entire dossier was very lacking. It didn’t even tell me that she was a nursing student, just where she went to school. I’m presuming Phounebiel knows that she’s in nursing, but I have no idea how, or why that information didn’t make it into the dossier.”

“That’s odd,” Crowley said with a frown. “I thought your lot went all in on the Big Brother thing.”

“Well, they did _try_ to enact some form of surveillance, but apparently there’s too much demonic interference- by which I can only assume they mean you- in the area to get a good look,” Aziraphale said. “And they didn’t want to risk sending in any of the less experienced Earth operatives, on the presumption that you would defend your territory, as it were.”

“Really? Still?” Crowley said. “I’ve barely been up this way in the past few decades. I would have thought some of that energy would have dissipated by now.”

“Evidentially, it hasn’t,” Aziraphale said with a shrug. “So they sent me.”

Crowley made a thoughtful little noise in the back of his throat. “Huh. Maybe that’s why they want her.”

“What?” Aziraphale said.

“I mean, it’s a bad look, isn’t it, the Heavenly Host not being able to deliver on the omniscience. And to have a whole city be excluded, more or less, that’s got to be difficult to explain away.”

“I mean, it’s not _Heaven_ that’s omniscient, per se,” Aziraphale pointed out. “That’s God.”

“Yeah, but She’s supposed to be on your side,” Crowley said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Or you’re on Her’s, or however you want to phrase it.”

“And it’s not like they have to explain anything,” Aziraphale added.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s difficult to stop people from wondering, then,” Crowley said.

They didn’t need to stop anyone from wondering either. There wasn’t an angel left in Heaven that hadn’t learned to stop themselves from wondering before they could be stopped. Aziraphale decided against saying that out loud.

“So you think that if she does answer the call, then all the demonic energy surrounding Manchester will dissipate?” he asked.

“Well...” Crowley grimaced. “Even if it does work like that, I doubt she could dissipate _all_ of it. But it might be what they’re aiming for.”

“I-” Aziraphale looked down at his lap where he’d place the dossier, for all that he’d memorized its contents by now. “Unfortunately, I can’t say that not being able to see down here with the Observation Center’s usual clarity won’t be causing some manner of kerfuffle Upstairs.”

Crowley’s grimace deepened. “They really didn’t know that was here before?”

“If they did, they didn’t tell me about it,” Aziraphale said. “I was rather hoping they would never notice, to be frank.”

“That would have been convenient,” Crowley agreed, letting out a huff of air. “Right. What kind of kerfuffle are we talking about here?”

“I really couldn’t say,” Aziraphale said, shifting uncomfortably.

Crowley rolled his eyes again. “Come on, I’m not asking for state secrets- astral secrets? Celestial secrets? Whatever you want to call it, I’m not asking for it. Just- are they going to send people down here after me?”

“After you? No, I doubt it,” Aziraphale said. “They might send someone down here to Manchester, but they’ve already sent someone to compile this near-useless dossier, and I’m going to guess that whoever it was, they never bothered you about it.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“At a guess, I’d say that if they were hoping that this would clear the area of interference, they would first train the eyes of the Observation Center down on Manchester, and if that still wasn’t working, then they would send an agent or two. I doubt very much that they would have orders to engage- probably just the opposite.”

“Do you have any guess as to when they might do that?”

“If they were going to do it- if this is considered a priority and something that Miss Nembhard heeding the call to the Lord is supposed to have some sort of effect on, which are two massive suppositions- then I’d say probably no less than three days and probably no more than a week after I report my success.”

Which did rather make the supposed angelic invasion of Crowley’s territory contingent on his success, but Crowley didn’t point that out. He merely drummed his hands along the steering wheel, looking out through the windshield with a frown on his face.

“Three days? That’s doable,” he said after a moment. “I can burn Gerald Lewis in three days, easy.”

“Gerald Lewis?” Aziraphale asked, startled.

“Yeah. That’s the boss and owner over the Spanner,” Crowley explained with a frown. “Why? Do you know him?”

“No, no,” Aziraphale said. “I just thought you’d picked up another alias, and was very confused as to how you ended up at Gerald Lewis.”

Crowley had- well. He hadn’t _changed_ names over the years, save for the once (and, presumably, at some point after the Fall and prior to their meeting in Eden). But he had changed how he was _called_ , translating it to fit with whatever local languages were being spoken at the time. The name change had changed to root word from “crawl” as in “to slither, to creep, to move on one’s belly” to “crow” as in “to shout or cry out triumphantly”. The fact that the words sounded so similar in English had not truly registered until he found himself correcting Michael one day in the 1700s. Thankfully she was more than used to him updating him with the most current terms Crowley was using for himself by that time and found his remarks to be indicative of his success surveilling his adversary, rather than anything closer than the truth.

(Aziraphale, of course, remained Aziraphale, the name given to him by Eve. All he’d done to it over the years was occasionally pick out a more localized, human sounding name to serve as an alias as he lived among the local humans.)

“Ha! No, no, nothing like that,” Crowley said. “ _Gerald Lewis_. Why would I go around calling myself something like that?”

“I don’t know,” said Aziraphale, who still hadn’t ever learned why he’d settled on Anthony. “Maybe that’s what the J stands for?”

“What the- Gerald with a J? _Jerald_?” Crowley pulled a face. “Who spells Gerald with a J?”

“Not Gerald Lewis, then, I take it,” Aziraphale replied.

“No! The man’s an arse, mind, but he’s not the sort of arse who spells his name with a J,” Crowley told him, still sneering.

“But he is the sort you would ‘burn’?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley frowned at him. Aziraphale smiled back and Crowley hissed, his tongue forked and darting out.

“It’s not like I’m going to literally set him on fire,” Crowley explained after a moment. “The bar, yes, that’s going up but I have no plans for him to be inside when it does.”

“What?” Aziraphale asked.

“I’ve got a plan. I call the public health inspector, get the place shut down because, as you’ve noticed, it’s filthy. Then while it’s closed I set it on fire, and make sure it looks like an obvious case of arson. The insurance and the police will both assume that Lewis either paid someone to do it or did it himself, I plant some evidence to make sure it sticks, and then he goes to prison where his shitty sense of entitlement will not improve at all. That’s it, job evilly done me, and I get to move on to my next gig. I only haven’t done it yet because I don’t know what my next gig is going to be.”

“Is he really so- so odious as to deserve all that?” Aziraphale asked.

“Yes,” Crowley said. “He just- he’s such a consistently horrible person. Worse, he’s smug about it. The sort of person who will take a look at you, pick out something that people must have tried to pick on you about before- race, religion, gender, sexuality, weight, accent, rare genetic eye disorders, you name it- and makes it into a punchline to a joke he expects you to laugh at along with him and everyone else in earshot. That sort of an arse, you know?”

For a moment, Aziraphale thought of Gabriel. Then he pushed that strange, discordant thought away. “Yes, I’m familiar with the type,” he said.

“Then you get it,” Crowley said. “So, prison: it won’t do him or anyone else any favors, but it will make me feel better about the whole thing. I guess I could leave Manchester after that, let your lot have a poke around while I...” He trailed off with a grimace.

Aziraphale was saved from having to come up with a reply by the blessing he’d placed on Miss Nembhard alerting him that she was on the move. Sure enough, before he could say anything Crowley had announced, sotto voice “Put your hands together, demons and gentleangels, it’s Vicky.”

Miss Nembhard was dressed differently than she had been the day previous. She was wearing a nice pair of slacks, a floral printed blouse, and some sort of heeled shoes with lots of straps around the ankles. Her hair, already short, had been lacquered down and pressed into the sort of curls Crowley often sported as a woman, rather than the tighter coils they’d seemed to naturally fall into yesterday. She stopped for a moment, studying her reflection in a nearby shop window. As they watched, she pulled out a tube of lipstick from her handbag, and stood there, considering. Then she suddenly shoved it into her pocket and took off running- the bus had just pulled up at the corner, and apparently she intended to be on it.

“Shall we?” Aziraphale asked. The bus made to pull away without her, stopped, and then opened its doors as the driver caught sight of her.

“The game’s afoot,” Crowley agreed, and put the Bentley in gear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... or I'll be back in two weeks! Two weeks is good, apparently. 
> 
> I'll be busy on Sunday so there will be no update then, but next Friday, I promise I'll be back with more.


	10. Tailing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay, I had a bad case of "my brain is bees and also on fire".

As they followed Miss Nembhard through the streets on Manchester- or, at least, followed the various buses she took- Crowley filled in some of the blanks in the dossier Heaven had assembled on her. 

Her parents were both from Jamaica originally, part of the Windrush generation. Her mother was a nurse, and her father had worked various menial jobs before becoming something of a successful chef. Church had been a large part of her childhood. She still sang hymns, sometimes, as part of her act. Possibly she sang at her current church too, though Crowley, for obvious reasons, didn’t know very much about that.

She knew early on that she was different than expected, but didn’t quite know how. It made a space between her and the rest of her family- Crowley got the dsitinct impression that she hadn’t been very close with any of her siblings- into which grew a thousand different assumptions that turned out to be false and expectations she couldn’t possibly meet. She’d thought that she might be gay, when she was younger. Her church had tried to pray it away, and for a time she’d pretended that it worked. It wasn’t until very recently, at some point in the last couple of years, that she realized who she was, and began the messy work of remaking herself. 

They were friends, she and Crowley, or something of the kind. Crowley didn’t say as much, of course, but he doubted very much that Miss Nembhard would have shared such private information with someone she did not trust, and it was even more doubtful that Crowley would have remembered it if he didn’t care. 

“She trying to get the sex reassignment surgery done privately. She doesn’t want it done on the NHS, not when she’s going to be working for them. The gossip mill is awful, apparently.” Crowley didn’t sound unhappy about the information. Aziraphale wondered if he was going to try to do something with that next. 

“How does she intend to handle the colleagues she has now?” Aziraphale asked. “I saw her at her work yesterday, and she didn’t seem to be out to most of them.”

“Well, she’s not planning on being here,” Crowley said. “She’ll be graduating soon, and she’ll be leaving Manchester when she does. Birmingham, I think. South of here, but not too far south, and big enough that she’ll have no problem blending in. Once the name change is legal, there’s not going to be much anyone can do about it unless they get ahold of her birth certificate or trace her NI number or something.”

Aziraphale nodded. It was a sound plan. He knew several people who had done just that, or similar enough. He knew a few people for whom it hadn’t worked out, too, though that was always a risk.

Miss Nembhard herself, still oblivious to their presence, went about her business. It very obviously wasn’t her usual Friday business. She wasn’t travelling in the direction of the University of Salford, for one thing, and it wasn’t long before it was well past when her class should have begun. 

“Is she taking off work tonight, do you know?” Aziraphale asked. 

“I don’t think so,” Crowley replied. “She would have gotten someone to cover for her if she had, and Caleb didn’t mention it.”

“Would Caleb have covered her shift?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Yes?” Crowley frowned and turned to him, the afternoon sun catching against his hair and painting it aflame. “Why do you ask?” 

“Well, you pole dance, and she performs as a drag queen. Those do seem like two very different skill sets.”

“Caleb’s talented. If he’d been born a few centuries earlier, he would probably have an obscenely rich patron paying for his every wish by now. Or possibly he would have been hung as a witch and a sodomite, it would depend on what was on, really.”

“Ha,” Aziraphale replied humorlessly. 

He stared out the window a bit. They were outside of some kind of medical complex.

“She couldn’t be in surgery _today_ , could she?”

“No, she’s aiming to do that next year,” Crowley said. “If I had to guess I’d say she was visiting a shrink. That’s mandatory, right? Getting your head shrinked before you get anything serious done? Have someone sign something confirming that you are as you say you are?”

“I believe so,” Aziraphale said. 

After roughly half an hour more, Miss Nembhard reappeared, promptly breaking into a sprint when she saw that the bus was pulling up to her stop. Unlike before, the bus driver either did not see her, or did not care enough to stop for her, and she was stuck waiting for the next bus for the better part of an hour. 

And then she missed her connection, and had to wait for another half hour. 

And then, after she’d ducked into another building, she ended up waiting for nearly two hours while the bus refused to show up. 

“You know,” Aziraphale said. “I’m beginning to realize why Heaven thinks you’re behind this.”

“Is it my fault that the buses in this city are shit?” Crowley demanded.

Aziraphale, in a rare display of his six thousand years of accumulated wisdom, said nothing. 

“Well, it’s not supposed to come down on her _specifically_ ,” Crowley grumbled. “Besides, it’s not like this is about her becoming a priest or whatever. She seems like she’s doing stuff related to her surgery.”

“Well,” said Aziraphale.

“Well what?” Crowley demanded. 

“Well, you said it yourself: she’s looking to get her surgery done and then get her career started,” Aziraphale said. “It would also make sense if she did that for her religious calling as well as her medical one.”

Crowley’s mouth transformed itself into an angry slash. “That’s still presuming that she wants a career in religion.”

“That would be convenient, yes,” Aziraphale said, exasperated. “What do you want me to say, Crowley? They’ve given me a job, I have to at least attempt to do it.” 

“Yeah, I know, I know, I just-” Crowley’s hand waved through the air. “It’s never struck you as being creepy? You know, you call someone to the Lord and they just drop everything and go?”

Aziraphale frowned loudly at him until he turned in his seat to face him. 

“What?” Crowley asked. 

“That’s not how it works,” Aziraphale told him. “It’s not- it’s not _mind control_. I don’t _mesmerize_ them to the Lord, I just- it’s like tempting. Or-” He shifted uncomfortably, and lowered his voice. “-it’s how I do tempting, at least, under the terms of the Arrangement. They can say no. I just try to choose people who don’t want to say no.”

“Oh,” Crowley said, and looked away again. 

“I’m uncommonly good at it, apparently,” Aziraphale continued. “No one bothered to tell me this until almost precisely a century ago, now, but apparently the average success rate is somewhere around 40 per cent. I’m at a very solid 100.” Which did explain Crowley’s impression that it was a compulsion, come to think of it.

“Oh,” Crowley said again. “Well. Good for you then.” Then he twisted around to face him. “Wait. So if only two fifths of the humans actually ever answer the call, why do they have their knickers in a twist over Vicky?”

“I don’t know!” Aziraphale said. “I don’t know why, Crowley, I just- I’m just doing as I’m told.”

“Well, something about this stinks,” Crowley said. “And I don’t like it one bit.”

Aziraphale turned his attention back to Miss Nembhard, who was checking her watch and then checking the street with ever increasing anxiety. 

“One thing at a time,” Aziraphale murmured. “We’re in agreement, I think, that she needs to be in a better place. More financial security, perhaps more emotional support.”

Crowley made a sort of non-committal hum, but said “If I’m going to be burning down the Spanner sooner rather than later, then she'll probably need some place to land on her feet, yeah.”

“Her rent is awful, you said.”

“I’m surprised I haven’t gotten a commendation for it,” Crowley said. “£125 a month might be a decent third of a rent in London, but up here that’s atrocious.”

“So, better housing and a financial cushion,” Aziraphale said, suppressing a wince as Miss Nembhard’s distress slid her closer and closer to tears. “I’m not sure about the housing just yet, but I can probably manage to give her a bit of a windfall these next few nights.”

“Got a bit put away, have you?” Crowley asked. 

He did, actually, just in case- well, in case of a repeat of 1985, but he doubted very much that he would have to dip into it now. “They pulled me out of my tour of the States. I’ve been planning it for years. I filled the preliminary paperwork all the way back in April of last year, and had all the addendums squared away by May. Everything has been finalized and set in stone since October and I was barely halfway through my itinerary when I was told to get back here and take care of this immediately. I’m sure they’ll forgive the miraculous expenditure, since this is so very important to them.”

Crowley gave him a small smile, sharp and fond, via the rear view mirror. The effect was ruined by the way Miss Nembhard was beginning to cry in earnest. 

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said. “That’s- Crowley, do you think we might..?”

“Might what?” Crowley said cautiously. 

“Well, it’s only that we’re in a vehicle which could solve Miss Nembhard’s current transportation problem.”

“We’re not having humans in the Bentley!” Crowley cried. “We’re not. _I’m_ not.”

“Why not?” Aziraphale asked. “I mean, she knows you already, and I tend to come across as very nonthreatening to most young ladies, so-”

“So nothing!” Crowley hissed. “No humans in the Bentley!”

“Why not?” Aziraphale asked again.

“Because humans sweat, that’s why!”

As excuses go, it was a pretty terrible one. For one thing, he’d never known the Bentley to be anything less than perfectly temperate no matter the weather outside, so there was very little risk of breaking out into a sweat. For another, Crowley himself sweat when he deemed it appropriate. Last night on stage, for example, he’d practically glistened. 

Oh good Lord, but he couldn’t say _that_.

“Well, there’s nothing for it, then,” Aziraphale said hurriedly, reaching for the door. 

“Oh, come on, angel, don’t-” Crowley began, a grimace of an apology playing on his face. 

“I had a job to do, let me do it,” Aziraphale said. “It’s probably past time for me to make contact with her anyway.”

“Aziraphale-”

But Aziraphale had already stepped out onto the curb and there was no sense in turning around now. So he pushed forwards, crossing the street and coming to a stop a polite distance away from Miss Nembhard. 

“Pardon me, miss-” She looked up sharply and he cut himself off, suddenly realizing that she might not wish to be addressed as such. “Oh, I’m sorry, I-”

“No!” She blurted out. Her eyes went wide, as though she’d startled herself. “No, you got it right,” she added, more quietly. 

After a moment, Aziraphale reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a handkerchief. Miss Nembhard took it with a sniff, and dabbed at her eyes. 

“I’m Ezra,” he said, after giving her a moment to compose herself. “Ezra Fell.”

“Alex,” she says. No surname, but that was more than fair, considering. Any young woman in her position would have learned caution.

“Well, I’d say it was a pleasure, Alex, but you seem to be in some distress,” he said. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess,” she replied. “I guess you could say that. I-” She stopped herself again. 

Aziraphale waited. 

“It’s just so stupid!” she cried out. “I took the day off from my classes and I got my flatmates to do my hair and I didn’t even get anything _done_ and now the bus is late and I’ll have to go straight to work and-”

The clap of thunder sounded at such a dramatically appropriate time that Aziraphale would have known it for Crowley’s miracle even without the telltale whiff of a demonic miracle. 

“-and it’s going to rain!” she wailed. 

“It does appear that way,” Aziraphale agreed. “And here I am without an umbrella.”

They shared a nervous look up through the top of the bus shelter, which was sporting a large hole edged with rust. 

“I don’t suppose you know of somewhere nearby where we might be able to keep dry, perhaps call for a cab?” Aziraphale asked. “I’d be happy to call one for you as well.”

“I- I can’t afford that,” she protested. 

“Oh, I’ll pay,” Aziraphale said. “It’s no trouble.”

“But-”

“It’s no trouble,” Aziraphale repeated firmly. “None of us wants to be left out alone in the rain, dear girl. If one day you should find yourself in my shoes, I hope you’ll do just the same.”

Alex wavered for a moment. There was another, well-timed roll of thunder, too loud to be considered in the distance. Aziraphale wondered absently how Crowley was managing that. Was he piping the audio from their conversation out of the Bentley’s speakers?

He could ask the demon later. For now, Alex nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I know a place. _Lucinda’s_. Come on, it’s not far.”

She took off. Aziraphale hurried behind her- she was nearly of a height with Crowley, and her legs were consequently that much longer than his. It took a bit of effort to keep up. Some distance behind them, the Bentley crawled along, unnoticed by anyone but himself.

“Come on,” Alex called. “We’re trying not to get caught in the rain.”

“I’m coming!” Aziraphale replied, and moved just a little bit faster


End file.
